Rabbits Who Run Get Shot
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: ...because if you're piloting the most advanced mech ever created by mankind, you might as well attach some bunny ears to it.


**Rabbits Who Run Get Shot**

It was hot around Alice Springs.

That, Lieutenant Allira Berger thought, was not only an understatement, but also one of "no shit." It was central Australia. It was summer. It was hot. It would have been hot and dry even if it wasn't summer, because this was bloody Australia. Driest continent on the bloody planet unless you included Antarctica (and no-one included Antarctica – she figured it was prejudice against penguins). And while that might have been a bearable state of affairs, that a horde of Union forces were approaching the city put a damper of any idea of finding a pool and jumping in.

"Shit," she whispered, looking through her pathfinder.

"That bad huh?"

She looked at Sergeant Sykes. "You can tell from one word?"

"Many different ways of saying shit. Lots of ways of shitting as well."

"Thanks for the mental image you conjured there."

He shrugged. "Doing my part L.T."

"Yeah? Well do your part and try and get everyone else to stop shitting their pants as well."

She didn't know if the troops in her section heard her. She couldn't even be sure if they were shitting. Still, chances were they _were_ shitting, because God damn it, she was close to shitting herself as well. She figured her people would have shat themselves in 1788, and shat themselves again in 1942, but neither invasion of this continent could have compared to what the Union had conjured up. Walkers. Fighters. Infantry marching in staggered formation. Advancing on Alice Springs without any haste, as if to say "we know you can see us, and we don't care."

"L.T.?"

She looked at Sykes. "How'd it go?"

"The 'stop the troops from shitting' operation?"

She nodded.

"Good as can be expected. Pissing though? Now that can't be helped."

She took a swig from her flask. So hot here, she'd be pissing yellow if she survived this.

Key word on "if," she reflected. The Union was advancing north. South Australia was under their control, and so were sizable chunks of territory in every part of the world (except Antarctica, because again, no-one liked penguins). Six years of war, and the Polity had been beaten back on every front. Much as people talked about how this was a war of ideas rather than territory, it hadn't changed the nature of war itself – territory was territory. Territory was where you could take infrastructure, recruit followers, launch other attacks. So being the largest town in this part of the country, Alice Springs made perfect sense for the Union to advance upon. And as such, it made sense for the Polity to defend it.

Using the broadest definition of 'defend,' she reflected. The Polity/ADF forces weren't lacking in infantry, spread out mainly across the city's south in a series of trenches and foxholes. What they _were_ lacking in was everything else – fighter jets. Tanks. Mechs. The only thing they had in abundance rather than soldiers was stationary artillery deployed in Alice Springs proper, and she had little delusion as to how effective it would be. Mechs were big. Mechs could take a lot. Mechs were advancing on them from the south, and all she and her troopers could do was wait for the fighting to start.

"L.T.?" Sykes asked.

Turned out they didn't have to wait long.

She took out her pathfinders again as the guns began firing. As fighters began flying overhead, unleashing barrages of missiles against the Union forces. No cheers erupted from the line however. No blowing of the whistle to go over the top. Out here in the desert, bereft of any cover, advancing against a force like the one before them would have been suicide. And yet…

 _Shit._

Allira grit her teeth, seeing how little the barrage was actually doing. Union soldiers were dropping down left, right, and centre, but they were academic – the Union had no shortage of fanatics or brainwashed drones, they'd keep coming until victory or defeat. No. It was those damn mechs that were the issue – the ones that were lobbing shells back at the Polity forces. The ones that were shrugging off the shells that were hitting them and/or utilizing AA defence systems against the fighters above. Here and there, a mech would fall, but it was like dropping pebbles in a river in the hope of damning it. Gritting her teeth, Allira looked up as she saw a fighter get hit, spiralling down into the desert, its rear on fire.

"Shit," Sykes whispered as the fighter disappeared from view. "Shit!"

"There's that word again," Taynya murmured.

It wasn't a pleasant sight, seeing the fireball on the horizon. What was less pleasant was that the Union was lobbing shells not only at the city, but at the battle line itself. That, and an awful lot of bullets.

 **ENGAGE**

The words flashed over her helmet's HUD.

 **ENGAGE**

She looked at her troop. Her mob. Men and women who, until six years ago, had deemed to hope that the world had moved past war. Who'd never imagined that they'd be at the frontlines of a world war.

 **ENGAGE**

She yelled out orders for her squad to do so. For riflemen and machine gunners to open fire on the Union infantry. For Chan and Pavarati to train the HEAT launcher on the Union tanks. To not shit themselves.

She didn't actually say that. But she hoped that the orders she gave out conveyed the intent.

Gunfire erupted from the Polity lines – infantry, tanks, and a handful of mechs forming a barrage that was more substantial than pebbles, but still amounted to little more than throwing rocks instead. Out in the open, the Union infantry were like lambs to the slaughter, but that wasn't the point. Their heavy armour was. And even if her mob took out the Union troopers, even if they crippled every one of their tanks, that still wouldn't give them victory. They had to take out the mechs. The mechs who were firing on them. Killing them.

"Lieutenant."

She kept firing. Through gritted teeth, through squinted eye, she kept firing.

"Lieutenant!"

She looked at Sykes. "What?!"

He ducked down as a shell hit the line – she heard the screams. Could smell the blood.

"We have to fall back!"

The Union forces were getting closer. Their infantry, either through orders or a sudden sense of self-preservation, were now clustering around their tanks and mechs for cover. At this close range, their armour could fire with much more force, and much more accuracy.

"Lieutenant?!"

There was chatter over her helmet's radio. It almost drowned out the explosion of one of the mechs going down.

"Did you get the order?" she asked.

It was quite surreal, knowing you were about to die, but were able to choose how you got to do it.

"What?" Sykes asked.

"Did you get an order to retreat?" She looked at her mob. "Did you?"

No-one answered.

"No retreat," she said, firing from her rifle again. "Rabbits who run get shot."

One of the Union forces dropped.

"What?" Sykes repeated.

"General Blamey, 1942," she grunted. "Look it up if you survive."

Sykes didn't say anything.

"Sykes?"

She looked at him. He looked back at her through his right eye, blood pouring out from the left side of his face. Or rather, what was left of it.

 _Shit._

She didn't shit. But she was pissing herself.

She could see that some of the troopers were attempting to fall back, leaving the cover of the trenches and foxholes. True to her words, and that of a long dead whitefella, they were being mowed down in droves. The mechs' height, coupled with their rate of fire…it was a massacre.

Her mob was taking it in their stride though – least as best they could. A HEAT round was fired, hitting the legs of one of the mechs. It stumbled, but didn't fall.

 _We're going to die here,_ she thought to herself.

She fired, hitting a Union tank. The bullets bounced off.

 _Fuck it._

"Lieutenant?"

She glanced round at the trooper – Corporal Lipton. Technically an acting sergeant now that Sykes was dead, but then, what did chain of command matter now?

"Corporal?"

He pointed up at the sky. Frowning, she followed his finger, after which, she took out her pathfinder.

"Reinforcements?" she asked.

"You tell me ma'am."

There was chatter over the radio – no talk about reinforcements though.

And yet the thing in the sky was a Polity ship, or at least, it bore the Polity logo, and what reason would the Union have for subterfuge now? By her guess, it was a _Greenwood_ -class strato-carrier, a type of transport usually used for armour. The Union fighters were ignoring it – maybe they were just that confident.

"What are they doing?" Allira murmured to herself. "They're deploying out in the desert?"

She appreciated reinforcements. She didn't appreciate dropping them out in open ground where they'd be lambs to the slaughter.

"Bay's opening," Lipton said, also looking through his pathfinder. "It…it's a mech."

Allira squinted – yes, it was a mech. But it wasn't like any she'd seen before.

It was colourful for starters – green and white. But that was the far least noticeable thing about it. No. What _was_ noticeable was how its structure was humanoid. How upon deploying, it took up two giant guns and began…skating? Allira wasn't sure how to describe it.

"Calm yourselves lads and lassies, Cammie's here."

And why the hell did the mech have a giant pair of bunny ears?

"Ma'am?" Lipton asked.

Allira just stared, dumbstruck. The radio was a chatter, a mix of Aussie accents mixed with a Scottish one. The Scottish one seemed to be having fun, given the series of whoops she was letting out. And overall, Allira couldn't blame her. One moment, the Union had been sure of victory. Next, a giant bunny mech was skating around them, shooting them, and moving too fast to be shot in turn.

 _That's it, I'm dead,_ Allira thought. _Only explanation. Hell's the loonie bin, and it's mocking me with this._

Or not – Hell wouldn't have Union mechs falling like rabbits to…well, a rabbit, but she was thinking "to dogs" or "to hunters" was a better term. Either way, they were being hit hard. Fast as this mech was, she doubted it could take on all the Union forces, but they'd been caught off-guard, and they were being forced to divide their attention. Which allowed the Polity's remaining armour to open some righteous fury on their unrighteous arses.

She went back to firing. All she was good for was to deal with infantry, but damn it, victory had been snatched from the jaws of defeat, and she was going to do her part in it. Right up to the point when the last Union mech collapsed, leaving the giant bunny mech to jump on it and strike a pose.

"Betcha dinnae see that comin' did ya?" the voice said over the radio.

Allira supposed she hadn't.

And she also supposed that perhaps not all rabbits that ran got shot.

* * *

 _A/N_

 _Just FYI for any historical sticklers, I've seen Blamey's statement in the Kokoda Campaign that "it's the rabbit who runs who gets shot," but I've seen a variation of it that provides the title._


End file.
